The present invention relates to golf clubs, and in particular, to an improved metal wood-type golf club having improved perimeter structure and weight distribution.
Many wood-type golf club heads are now made of metal. The conventional metal wood-type clubs are formed with a relatively thin face and a thin metal shell, which typically surrounds a foam filled cavity. The clubfaces of conventional metal wood clubheads join or interface with the upper crown portion, side walls, and the sole plate of the clubhead. Generally, there is no significant additional mass provided where the clubface connects with these other parts of the clubhead. Some of these club heads have reinforced ball striking faces to add strength and stability at the point where a golf ball is struck.
A recent tendency has been to make these types of club heads larger, making them more attractive to the golfer and also easier to hit. Such metal woods, because of their larger sizes, generally have thinner club faces and even thinner upper crowns and surrounding walls.
This design structure has created many problems in the industry because such metal wood club head structures may incur cave-ins at the clubface, stress cracks in the surrounding walls, and buckling at the upper crown portions of the club head when golf balls are struck repeatedly with great force. Moreover, these types of metal woods often must be filled with foam, because of the otherwise high noise level in the form of a pinging or tinning sound, generated when ball contact is made. Foaming adds to the cost of production and leads to other problems, such as the selection of the right kind and amount of foam to completely fill the shells, so that foam serves it purpose and does not come loose after the club has been used.
Various attempts have been made to reinforce metal wood-type golf club heads as evidenced by the U.S. Patent to Raymont (U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,399) which reinforces the rear inner surface of the ball striking face with a honeycomb structure and my own U.S. Pat. No. 5,141,230, which reinforces the interior of a metal wood with a first mass located behind the ball striking face and a second mass under the upper or crown surface of the club head. These and other attempts at strengthening and modifying the structural integrity of conventional metal woods have experienced varying degrees of success.